Show HN: Printable Classics – Free printable classic books for hobby bookbinders

82 pointsposted 3 days ago
by bookman10
(printableclassics.com)

32 Comments

reedlaw

3 days ago

This is a fine and useful project, but my experience with newly printed classics is the quality is inferior for a number of reasons. Besides paper and binding, typesetting is something that older editions rarely messed up, but some new editions create a facsimile by scanning all the pages and then re-printing. That means that instead of getting the crisply defined letters of an old printing press, you get fuzzy letters and scan artifacts. This (https://printableclassics.com/harvard_classics) shows what I mean. Not only is the typesetting quality worse, but the price is much higher for the new edition. I don't have a problem with the price on Printable Classics ($885 for a new 50 volume set is reasonable), but you could often find the same thing cheaper used. A used set is $300-$600 on ebay. The value of these PDFs is that you could make a higher quality edition as long as the text is OCR'ed and properly typeset (which is true of the Moby Dick version on the site). For the scanned copies, it would be a big undertaking to re-typeset, but I'm sure LLMs could help.

rahimnathwani

3 days ago

I wonder how good a job the ClearScan feature on Adobe Acrobat would do. IIRC it creates one or more fonts based the existing characters in the PDF. So each lowercase 'a' would look the same, and be a sort of average of all the 'a' letters in the book.

nxobject

2 days ago

Interesting – I have some old British academic press books with "advanced" typographical features; I'll see how it does with them. (The type you have to break out advanced typography features in Adobe apps to set – old style and modern numerals, interpuncts, two types of ampersands - one for headings and body text, swash alternate forms in titles.)

bookman10

3 days ago

That's neat. I'll look into that.

rahimnathwani

3 days ago

Sorry, apparently they renamed it to 'Editable text and images'.

bookman10

3 days ago

I agree. I wish I had the time to retypeset those. I would be concerned though with mildew/mold on old, used versions though.

reedlaw

3 days ago

That's true. Older books require skill to restore, so choosing old or new is a balance.

staplung

3 days ago

Very cool, thanks for putting this up.

Couple of observations:

- the page size drop down doesn't display any units (e.g. "6 x 9"). I assume there're all in inches but it would be a little more helpful if it said so and/or included a common name (e.g. US Letter) if one exists for that size.

- you might want to look into page imposition[1] something that's basically essential for any kind of stitched binding (as opposed to "perfect binding"). Full-blown imposition software is often ridiculously expensive and can have quite a few options so it's definitely both an engineering and UI challenge. In the meantime, Bookbinder JS[2] is a great site that I think runs entirely client side and can transform any PDF.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imposition

2: https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js/?paperSize=LE...

cbondurant

3 days ago

If imposition was something for this site to add, I'd recommend doing it through LaTeX with the pdfpages package[1]. You generate the pdf normally, then re-lay it out using a second latex file dedicated to just doing the imposition. It's how I've done all of my imposition so far, and its more than powerful enough to do the kind of simple page layout that you would want to do with a home printer.

Maybe more complex layout might be needed if you happened to have a printer that could handle like, A0 size paper, or continuous rolls, which would give more flexibility in terms of the number of ways you could fit your pages onto the stock material. for the hobbyist though? More than good enough.

1: https://ctan.org/pkg/pdfpages?lang=en

bookman10

3 days ago

Thanks, I hadn't seen bookbinder.js, that looks really neat. I'll remember that if I get back into sewn binding.

I personally like to use standard A4/letter size paper and print one page per side and do perfect binding. Printing two A5 pages on A4 was my original approach, but then the grain direction is wrong for standard computer paper and the pages come out too stiff.

I think the quality is good enough for me, but I definitely understand the appeal of sewn binding.

gibspaulding

3 days ago

I’ll be curious to go through your tutorial later as book binding is something I’d like to learn. I was really excited recently when I was able to get Claude Code to write me a python script to generate a custom weekly planner since I haven’t found a commercially available one laid out like I’d like. Unfortunately I haven’t found anywhere that can print something pocket sized for me, so for it to be actually useful, I’m going to have to print and bind it myself.

bookman10

3 days ago

I had a good experience using Lulu for print on demand books. You can order just quantity one if you want to go that route.

robcohen

3 days ago

Interesting. I like the idea of reprinting classics to all look identical as a way of designing a library. Would be interesting to select a set of books for your kid, have them printed, and just put them in their room. I wonder if any startups are doing this.

storystarling

3 days ago

Nice work! We create personalized children's books - parents share their idea and photos, and AI brings their custom story to life with their child as the protagonist. We do hybrid fulfillment depending on the country. The PDF formatting challenges you mentioned are very real!

m-hodges

3 days ago

I recently got into watching YouTube bookbinding as a way to fall asleep at night. Then I found a local book and stationary studio for hobbyists to learn as a community. It’s not something I have time for right now, but it’s the kind of hobby I’d love to try one day.

bookman10

3 days ago

It's a really neat hobby. It's great for gifts, especially if you take the high quality artistic approach. I like to do simple "perfect binding" because it saves money (materials are probably around a penny per page), gets me the book faster than buying it, and makes all my books consistent in font, size, and cover style.

ramses0

3 days ago

How do you handle printing? I've got a color laser (that I'll generally run B&W), but it seems like "pigment inkjet" is actually the correct choice for the paper+ink combo.

What's your experience / recommendation?

My technical workflow (for personal books) is `Makefile` + `frontmatter.tex` + `chapter-*.md` + `endmatter.tex` and some unholy abomination of pandoc or whatever that'll stitch it all together and some other software to run imposition, etc.

I'll (at some point) take a look at what you're doing, but it's a really neat hobby- I've been doing 1-2 books at a time (~50-100 pages) w/ kettle stitching and hard-cover (with ribbons of course!).

...looking through your recommendations, but don't see mention of pigment-based ink/printers or short-grain paper (ChurchPaper was where I got some of mine from). Is the ET-8550 "the one" that you've found? Having something "large format" for printing is tempting, but it'd probably be better to outsource at $1-5/page compared to a more compact printer. What about drying out or long-term storage of inkjet / print heads?

re: the Guillotine, I've been tempted by seeing some hydraulic manual cutters, but it seems like big space investment... how have you experienced it? They're saying 400 pages (a whole ream?) on the one you've linked but that seems like a stretch.

Thanks, and be on the lookout for an email / pdf!

bookman10

3 days ago

My understanding is that ink tank printers can be cheaper per page, but lasers can be faster and possibly more durable. I think professional machines tend to be laser printers. I haven't had a problem with the heads drying out but I try to use my printers at least weekly.

I like the Epson ink tank printers and have been happy with them. I usually use cheap generic ink. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are better options though.

I mostly do perfect bound books so I can use normal printer paper, center the pages, and it will be in the correct grain direction. Otherwise you'll have to order through dedicated specialty paper suppliers and also might need a larger format printer. In a pinch, you can ignore grain direction but the end result definitely isn't as good. Once I run out of my current cover paper, I'll probably order coated on 1 side short grain paper from some specialty paper supplier.

I also use a one sided laminator on the cover which makes the cover much more durable.

I think the manual cutter works well enough for me. It does work at 400 pages with some muscle. Upgrading to a programmable cutter would be the next step for me, but it would only be needed if you're making 5+ books a day.

I use a manual perfect binder like this: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/A4-Size-Wireless-Desk...

It gives better results than thermal binding, but it's probably not worth the investment for most people.

I also like velobinding for short things.

zozbot234

3 days ago

You could print smaller booklets in half-page format and use stapled or sewn binding, for a more durable and higher-quality result. That could be done without needing a larger-format printer. It might be especially appropriate for shorter text such as individual articles, and this was often the historical practice with e.g. octavo books which were quite popular back in the day.

bookman10

3 days ago

Yes that works too, it's just the grain direction on printer paper runs along the long edge so the books end up very stiff if they're folded.

nxobject

2 days ago

Wowee, a dedicated machine! I built my own lying press with wooden cutting boards, and neatened out the edges of my text blocks with the blade of a chisel/single bevel utility knife that could be laid flat. I used an old application called Cheap Impostor that converted PDFs to printable signatures for me.

I was writing an honors thesis then, and DIYing my old books was much more interesting (and relaxing) way to get a book that I'd otherwise have to wait a month to get via interlibrary loan. Don't ask me where I got the scanned pages from...

4ndr3vv

3 days ago

> materials are probably around a penny per page

plus the cost of toner and paper?

bookman10

3 days ago

That would be including paper and toner, although it can be more.

For example, I can buy 5,000 sheets of printer paper for around $50. You use both sides so that would be half a cent per page.

I use an ink tank printer and you can get maybe a quart of ink for around $15.

It wouldn't include wear and tear on the printer, which is harder to quantify.

I also like to use cream colored paper instead of white which adds another half cent per page for perfect binding. Glue for the spine is a penny.

The cover itself might be around 20 cents of paper and 5 cents of ink.

xtiansimon

2 days ago

Affiliate link usage says something about the intended audience I think, which is interesting.

soupymcsoup

3 days ago

This is very cool. I've played around with bookbinding years ago and this site might just bring me back.

bookman10

3 days ago

Thanks, I'll definitely feel proud if I see someone else actually make one of these books.

oneseven

3 days ago

> Note this page includes affiliate links. [Amazon will earn less money if you use these links]

Ha ha. I never thought of that as a selling point for affiliate links. I suppose Amazon will make less money if people print their own books as well.

poulpy123

3 days ago

Nice work ! I started to look into bookbinding a few months ago. Is your pipeline open source ?

bookman10

3 days ago

Not yet and it's a little messy now to be honest.

The pipeline itself is in node.js and uses mostly pdf-lib (https://pdf-lib.js.org/) and ebook-convert (https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/generated/en/ebook-convert....)

For epubs, I split the book into chapters and run ebook-convert on each chapter individually, adding an extra page if needed to make the number of pages even. Then I combine all the chapters and do a custom scheme for numbering (because you don't want numbers on blank pages, you want the numbering to start at chapter 1, etc)

For html books from Project Gutenberg for example, I make sure they have text in <p> and chapters in <h2>. Then do a similar logic with ebook-convert.

For pdf books, I just use pdf-lib to draw the pages directly.

I also shift odd pages to the right and even pages to the left so there is a larger inner margin than outer margin.

If you're looking to do custom books, I would just use ebook-convert by itself, it just won't be quite as pretty though because it lacks those improvements.

poulpy123

3 days ago

Thanks for the explanation!